The use of X-ray source or other high energy radiation source test equipment may be dangerous. New safety regulations attempt to prevent personal exposure to such dangerous radiation which may be caused by inadvertent, improper, or mischievous opening of shutters which cover the radiation source beam ports. For example, in X-ray diffraction equipment the shutters are spaced about the X-ray source and, while some shutters may be opened while radiation is being generated by the source, it is desirable to prevent other shutters from being opened while radiation is being generated without the proper test equipment positioned to protect the user.
Prior art safety shuttering devices suffer from their cumbersome design, which greatly increases the cost of the device. Further, many of the safety shuttering apparatus, such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,721,826 of Thomas, describe apparatus which is not readily adaptable to existing high energy radiation sources. Thus, to convert such existing sources into safe operating devices is not feasible with most prior art apparatus.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a safety shutter for a high energy radiation source.
Another object of this invention is to provide a safety shutter adaptable to state of the art, high energy radiation sources.